Country: France
Year: 2006
Duration: 65'
The film is based on the pictures Jean-Daniel Pollet took before dying for an entire year, day by day. The film recounts the filmmaker’s life as he saw it through his camera lens. Extremely debilitated from being hit by a train in 1989, in 2001 he retired to his farmhouse photographing the now more restricted world around him. Jean-Paul Fargier has tried to uses these images, interwoven with footage of moments spent with his friend, to create a piece about this artist and to render as faithfully as possible the feelings that drove him. “When he ordered the text from me, Jean-Daniel only imposed two words: anxiety and serenity. I understood that he spoke of his own anxiety, his own serenity, his life approaching its end, his work about to reach an abrupt conclusion. It is with those two words, as I heard them that I worked out the text, as Pollet’s confession.” (J. P. Fargier)
Biography
film director
Jean-Paul Fargier
Jean-Paul Fargier (Aubenas, France, 1944) is a filmmaker, TV producer, writer, journalist, art and film critic, and film professor. He collaborated with several magazines over the years, like “Tribune socialiste” (1967-1970), “Cinéthique» (1968-1973), “Cahiers du cinéma” (1978-1989), “Le Monde” (1980-1982 and 1993-1996), “Libération” (1982-1983), “Art Press” and “Turbulences Vidéo.” He also wrote two books, published a collection of articles under the title Tivi ou Tivi pas, and collective works like Oú va la vidéo? He was a member of the collective Groupe Cinéthique in the 1970s. He wrote several documentaries for television, and he was one of the pioneers of the video format in French cinema, especially after the exposition organized during the 1986 Avignon Film Festival.
FILMOGRAFIA
Quand on aime la vie on va au cinéma (come/as Groupe Cinéthique, doc., 1975), Godard/Sollers: L’entretien (doc., 1984), Vingt p’tites tours (serie tv/tv series, cm, doc., 1989), Impressionisme, les origines (doc., 1994), Un siècle d’écrivains (serie tv/tv series, ep. Curzio Malaparte, Charles Péguy, doc., 1995), La case de l’oncle Doc (serie tv/tv series, ep. Man Ray Monsieur machine à coudre, doc., 1998), Versailles, les jardins du pouvoir (tv, doc., 2001), Jour après jour (coregia/codirector Jean-Daniel Pollet, doc., 2006), M la maudite (tv, doc., 2007), Empreintes (serie tv/tv series, ep. Jérôme Savary, animal (pas) triste, doc., 2009), Reims la romaine (cm, doc., 2010), …Et de Gaulle créa la Cinquième (tv, doc., 2012), Parle-moi encore! (mm, doc., 2016).